[DiTV ] All the Dogs do is murder!
dyreno:
I really did try to get my "killer dog" back on track and establish what was acceptable by the common standard. It was just a lost effort in the end. When i originally pitched the idea of Dogs in the Vineyard my "killer dog" was really excited because he had listened to a podcast group called "Warston Hall" play through a five session adventure on www.RPGMP3.com . I think that's where we're getting off to the wrong page. I'm not driving their story forward I'm driving my story forward. He keeps telling people how things work and whats whats based off that groups story. Then the whole group gets thrown off by two people telling two different views of whats acceptable. The session just started to drag along as the confusion continued to build until i reached the point of throwing up my hands and tossing my notes aside.
Even my attempt to shake things up a bit went over kinda badly. I started off by tossing them right in the mix as the local regional dog summoned them straight from the temple to his residence with a horrid problem on his hands. A chest was sent to him from Blue Creek filled with four watchdog coats riddled with bullets. He wanted to send them to investigate while he gathered more dogs. My "killer dog" was stern about not going and in-fact blamed the steward and wanted to judge him instead. With some boos from the other two and me rolling up a quick doctor dog to go with them they were off to Blue Creek. They fought the evil fake dogs that ruled the town and found the townspeople dead and dying locked in the local church. I threw a wrench into the mix when i introduced a wicked demon that was impervious to physical and gunfighting conflicts. Trying to get them to think outside the box or let them tryout their ability to exercise a demon in the name of god. When i tried to set the mood and put out some plot seeds, he kept interrupting me and wanted to keep trying to put bullets into his head or bury him in the well. I called it quits and just had the calvary show up with the steward leading the way. He literally said the hell with the tough demon that murdered the people, i can kill that steward. He handed him a knife and expected him to commit suicide. I was so tempted to have the steward and the senor dogs out right strip him of that coat. I gave it a second try with two more PCs joining and still we couldn't get going.
dyreno:
Just as a note I'm not saying that Wartson Hall didn't run a good game. They're a good group of guys and i really enjoy some of their audio.Here's where you can listen to some of their work on WWW.RPGMP3.COM. (http://www.rpgmp3.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=47&sid=dbe37038790984d4b4705d264bc5fe88)
Ward:
Sounds like you have some out of game talking to do to see what everyone expects from the game. Ron and some other who usually post in Actual Play often have great advice for just these kinds of situations.
Indy Pete:
I hear you man, I so do.
It still stumps me how folks can be sold a game about pseudo-Mormons in a West that never quite was which always degenerates into a bloodbath. I haven't yet played a game of DitV where the Dogs haven't blown/hung/burned folks in the Town to death given very little provocation.
It's become something of a running in-joke at our club, so much so that we've got Anti-Dogs in the Vineyard running this weekend, haha :)
http://www.ukroleplayers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=41424#p41424
I tried with the whole 'make the sinner their sister, their father, their mother' approach, but they dang gone hung them too. I ain't complaining too much because the sessions are still fun, but it's a different kinda fun from what I envisioned when reading the book.
Cheers
Pete
Moreno R.:
Quote from: Indy Pete on April 14, 2008, 05:56:59 AM
It still stumps me how folks can be sold a game about pseudo-Mormons in a West that never quite was which always degenerates into a bloodbath. I haven't yet played a game of DitV where the Dogs haven't blown/hung/burned folks in the Town to death given very little provocation.
I don't know, this never happened to me in playing DitV.
No, I am not saying that sometimes there wasn't a bloodbath. I am saying that, playing a lot of cities with my gaming group, there was NEVER a bloodbath. (if you don't count the very first time we played, with a GM who wasn't still on the page about the game and narrativism, and he believed that he could push the dogs around to follow "his story" with a lynch mob. We wiped the floor with them, leaving a lot of dead in our the dust). At most there were one or two dead for town, sometimes none.
In one town, one of the players (ironically, the same player who GMed the game above) took a bullet from another dog, to save a sinner.
I have seen bloodbath usually at convention, demoing the game to people who still didn't understand the game, having not played it nor reading the book. In this situation people usually create characters that are "little torquemadas" because this is what they expect from the game from "what people say". It's a problem of expectations,not of the game: If people think that a bloodbath is what is expected from them, this is what happen (Narrattiva began to use pre-generated characters in their demo games in Italy to avoid this pervasive "little torquemada" problems. They help a lot. For example, one of the pre-gen is gay, and another doesn't really believe in the faith. Nobody could mistake these characters for killing machines)
Did your player read the book, before playing it?
Anyway, there is the simple possibility that DitV isn't a game for your players. No game is good for everybody.
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